


Wellspring

by mresundance



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Bipolar Disorder, Bipolar Sherlock, Character Study, M/M, Mental Illness, PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-09
Updated: 2011-03-09
Packaged: 2017-10-16 19:41:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/168667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mresundance/pseuds/mresundance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The wounds not seen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wellspring

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'ed by Misanthropyray on livejournal and Kalypso on dreamdwidth. All other errors are mine.

He didn’t say ‘tell me about your wounds’, though he thought it. Sherlock did not mean John’s physical wounds, either; the delta of scarring on his shoulder. If Sherlock had said ‘tell me about your wounds’, he would have meant the wounds inside, the ones not seen. Sherlock has read these wounds with his mind, the way he’s read the physical ones with his fingertips: gently learning their bumps and rises, which parts are most sensitive and which seem sealed off from sensation. John’s limp, for instance. The tremors in his hand. The way certain sounds or smells turned him pale and rigid. Last month he’d begun trembling. He’d tried to hide it by bundling himself away in the armchair, resolutely crossing his arms. He’d looked like a man dangling off the edge of a precipice. Sherlock realised it had been Mrs. Hudson’s hoovering which had triggered John; the sound had reminded him of something from the war which made him shake and sweat.

This evening it had been the memory of Bonfire Night fireworks, a week gone, and John had finally given up. Retreating to his bed, he’d pulled the duvet over his head. It was what a child might do to shield himself from the dark, though Sherlock knew too well that it was the dark within John wrestled with.

Sherlock doesn’t have John’s wounds, not the external ones. Nothing save the web of darkened veins on his left forearm, a few old calluses from needles. John has never said ‘tell me about your wounds’ either, though Sherlock has read the words in John’s eyes.

‘Because the lithium failed,’ Sherlock would have said.

Sherlock’s wounds, the real ones, like John’s, are unseen. Others marvel at the wonder of Sherlock’s mind, his intellect sharp as scalpels. They never imagine that wonder turned inside out, scalpels pointed inwards. Others know Sherlock is an insomniac, but they imagine it’s because he refuses to sleep, not because there are times when his brain refuses to let him. Last summer, sunlight had dripped golden from the eaves when Corelli’s Concerto No. 1 in D Major had wormed its way into Sherlock’s head. It was still there when the leaves began to turn orange and red. By then every note the violins struck hurt. There were times that Sherlock lay on the couch listening to three, five, seven conversations in his mind, all at once. He trembled while Latin and French battered the inside of his skull.

Others also did not see when Sherlock’s mind collapsed altogether. Or, they saw the exterior signs of the interior damage. Anderson received the brunt of it, mostly because he was an idiot even on Sherlock’s good days. But Molly had been subject to it, and Mycroft and Lestrade and Sally and Seb and Victor and John and too many others. If Sherlock sneered, or dealt verbal shrapnel, it was because everything inside him felt wrong. The bones of his body came out at all the wrong angles, rubbed against and threatened to puncture holes in his eggshell skin.

John knew this. John had read Sherlock’s wounds too. He had touched them and learned them, just as his lips have touched and learned the veins and calluses on Sherlock’s arm. It was because John had known that he’d reached for Sherlock and coaxed him onto the couch and into his arms a few weeks ago. Sherlock, sickened by his own presence, had launched into a rapid, staccato monologue about how it would be so much easier if he could stop existing.

‘Or maybe,’ Sherlock had said, ‘I could just have my brain removed and put in a jar.’

‘You don’t mean that –’

‘I mean every word.’

There had been a long silence. John had stroked Sherlock, holding him together.

‘You know,’ John had murmured, ‘Marcus Aurelius says that “within is the wellspring of good”. We just have to dig deep enough to find it.’

‘What if the wellspring is tainted?’ Sherlock had lifted his head from John’s chest. John had cradled Sherlock’s face in his palm.

‘I don’t know.’ And John had been so raw, so good and so honest that Sherlock wished he could have a different mind, an undamaged one. Then John wouldn’t be stuck holding him when he ruptured again.

But when John buried himself under his duvet, shuddering at his own memories, Sherlock was glad for his mind and the hurt it had inflicted. It meant he knew that he should tread quiet, so quiet, to John’s bedside. Sit very gently on the edge of the bed and pause, so John, a lump of duvet, could tell him to piss off if he wanted. Sherlock listened to his breathing, watched the lump rise and fall as the room darkened.

Sherlock slid his hand, very carefully, under the duvet. John was bunched and warm. He squirmed but then stilled. Sherlock ran his fingers up John’s spine, resting his knuckles against the back of John’s neck. His fingers were cold, but he knew John found the sensation calming. He felt, rather than saw, John begin to relax. In the dark, John sighed, and the sound was like water bubbling up and draining out, slowly.


End file.
